Contemplative Cinema

[terabin]

While the Contemplative Cinema blogathon is going on over at Harry Tuttle's blog, Unspoken Cinema, I'm scurrying around, trying to come to terms with the very idea of it as a "movement," so to speak. A movement, which Tuttle defines in his latest post with four characteristics:

1. PLOTLESSNESS : no obvious (forefront) drama, no beguining, no denouement, open-ending, no drive to go forward, no major narrative gimmicks (flashback, multilayered stories), simplicity, atmospherical depiction, distanciation of protagonist(s) with background action, no imminent threat, no external forces pressuring the protagonist(s).

2. WORDLESSNESS : laconical interactions (or silent protagonist), no plot-drive expository filling, no psychological arguments, no voiceover, direct-sound (no score), body language.

3. SLOWNESS : long takes, static shots/slow camerawork, patient pace, uneventfulness (down time), "unnecessary" mundanity, uncut movements, activities filmed in their entirety, extended wait/pauses, conscience of time.

4. SOLITUDE : disconnectedness, wandering/idleness, loneliness, fatalism, ennui/melancholy/depression, no intellectualized existentialism, distanciation of protagonist(s) with the world, with other characters.

It seems to be a pretty broad movement if we accept the terms that Harry Tuttle gives us. I don't think that what Jarmusch, Tarr, or Ming-Liang do is particularly new. Cinema has always dabbled in meditative camerawork, visual minimalism, and non-narrativity. Take many silent films for example, which Tuttle acknowledges, or in a few of the precursors to the movement (Tarkovsky, Ozu, Bresson, the triumvirate Paul Schrader annointed as "transcendental" filmmakers). How is it that we can say that Contemplative Cinema is now and not then? One might even argue that Contemplative Cinema verges on the definition of art film in general.

Of course, I don't think anyone is arguing over there that the parameters of the movement are set in stone. They've spent quite a bit of time defining their terms. I'm just wondering what you Criterion folk think of the idea. Although this strikes me as a similar classification to the transcendental film idea, in this case, the argument is for a proposed model for what would be one of the major movements taking place in world cinema in the last 25-30 years, especially in the last 10 or 15.

Additionally, I wanted to reference the chronological list they use because I think it gives a better idea of what we're dealing with when we say Contemplative Cinema.

If you want a list of directors, Tuttle mentions the following:

This idea came from a few auteurs who seem to follow this path in total contradition to the narrative cinema tradition, to me they represent the epitome of "contemplation" since only images are left to hold the film together : Bela Tarr, Tsai Ming-liang, Bruno Dumont, Weerasethakul, Sharuna Bartas, Kore-eda, Hou Hsiao-hsien, Sokurov, Lisandro Alonso, Carlos Reygadas, Pedro Costa. So they are the ones I'd like to focus on primarily. There are also individual films by other auteurs that fit this profile perfectly without being a consistant trademark.

[justeleblanc]

Hello, List.

And there are so many of these films that are not mentioned, it might just be quicker to write directors names. I've been following the blogothan and it's been a rather pointless task. Still, maybe it will spark positive discussion.

[terabin]

I actually find the visual helpful: it serves to demonstrate their argument for a recent surge in Contemplative Cinema.

[Oedipax]

I don't really know what to make of this list as the application of the term is fairly subjective and open-ended - and there's a lot of films left out in the lists for both years gone by and the last few years, so the evidence for a resurgence in recent times seems inconclusive at best.

I will say, however, it was almost comical how many films listed here are currently on my Top 20 list over at YMDB. Whatever is meant by contemplative cinema, I suppose I count myself a big fan of it! This sort of thing could also apply to the short films I've been making over the past couple years.

[terabin]

I will say, however, it was almost comical how many films listed here are currently on my Top 20 list over at YMDB. Whatever is meant by contemplative cinema, I suppose I count myself a big fan of it!

Yeah, I feel the same way about it. That's why I'm intrigued by their efforts at categorization and description (of the proposed movement). I want to see if they can actually construct something out of a loose bunch of art films, many of which, of those I've seen, I like quite a bit.

In some ways, it seems to me that this is really just a celebration of current world cinema, a raising of awareness about the techniques and aesthetics being used, and so forth. In some ways, the blogathon is an attempt at saying that cinema is not dead as we continue on into the 21st Century, because the "contemplative" art film is not dead.

[justeleblanc]

Well, to be fair, it may just be the term "contemplative" that bothers me. I guess I used to use the "existential" term when speaking of these films.

And it's not really a movement in any way. It's maybe more of a genre.

[Oedipax]

I think existentialism is a little different as far as what I see in these films - for them to be existential (to me at least) suggests more of an active framework or worldview that the film is actively trying to convey, even if it's being done through listlessness, inertia, etc. When I think of contemplative cinema as practiced by, say, Claire Denis, it's definitely taking place in a post-existentialist world, where characters might espouse these views from time to time, but they are clearly not exactly aligned with those of the film and filmmaker.

I like the term "corporeal cinema" a lot - a cinema of bodies, not the classical "body genres" categorization (porn, horror, melodrama as genres that act on the viewer's body) but rather cinema that takes as its subject the body - the physicality and presence of its actors, who are more or less bringing themselves rather than any fictitious character to a role (Bresson is the obvious model here). Corporeal cinema is a contemplation of bodies, or of bodies in space - which is close to what I'm getting as a meaning for contemplative cinema anyway. There was a good article in Film Comment on the notion of corporeal cinema a few months back - The Death of Mr. Lazarescu figured heavily, as I recall.

[David Ehrenstein]

To me "Contemplative Cinema" immediately evokes Warhol, Snow (especially La Region Centrale), Maguerite Duras, Chantal Ackerman, Antonioni and Ozu.

[zedz]

Like David, I know what I mean by Contemplative Cinema, but I don't think the prescriptive characteristics cited above are very helpful. And they don't match up very well with the list of films cited: Passion of Joan of Arc plotless? The Mother and the Whore wordless? The Red and the White slow?

It seems like they're using 'contemplative' as a euphemism for 'serious art cinema', but frankly I think it's more useful to talk about these films and filmmakers on their own terms, appreciating their brilliant particularity, then to try and hobble them with some ill-fitting one-size-for-all conceptual leg-brace.

[David Ehrenstein]

To me they're films that get off of the traditional Route One of narrative at its most absolute.

Antonioni "told a story" in L'Avventura, but that's not what made it such a radical work. It was a film about place and atmosphere.

Coming from a different direction, Michael Snow's Wavelength actually has a plot and charaxcters. It's a murder mystery. But we tend to think of it first and foremost as a movie about a loft.

[portnoy]

As someone who contributed to the blog-a-thon, I'll say that I'm extraordinarily bothered by the term 'contemplative cinema' and I basically say as much in the preliminary fleshing out of my discussion.

[Macintosh]

All I have to say is that Old Joy fits all those decriptions perfectly. Watch it whenever you get the chance. Best film of the year!

[marty]

I read the first post and Old Joy also came to mind and seemed to fit most of the criteria for contemplative cinema.

I also agree with your sentiments. Best film of the year, by a long margin as well.

[Steven H]

To me, I see great contemplation in Victor Erice's Quince Tree Sun. The film has the ability to move it's viewer through a kind of pure contemplation. It's a film that seems to say a lot with very little, whether it's about the nature of art itself, or death (which is what many believe the film is "about", and a key element to understanding it.) The nature of "what is art?" and understanding death seem key to all contemplative filmmakers. Maybe if you've managed to put together something as large and complicated as a film, which can take years of your life and millions of dollars, it's almost impossibly for a person sensitive to their lives *not* to be contemplative about such things. A daunting confusion about your choice of expression rising with the stakes. Perhaps this is more of a western issue, because In some cases, like some asian cinema, I see contemplation as part of a wider Buddhist meditative tradition, which may not be a direct influence, but resides in the younger culture.

This line of thinking... leads to... an awful lot of... contemplation.

[marty]

Another contemplative film is Into Great Silence about the life of monks in a monastery. It runs for three hours, has no dialogue and no music. It is supposed to be reflective of life as a monk. It doesn't sound terribly exciting but it definitely stays with you as long as you are able to get into the right mood to see it.

[miless]

from the "rules" on the first post, all of Malick's films would be exempt (even though I consider them to be contemplative), but Eraserhead definitely fits the mold (or, I guess I should say is the bridge between experimental and contemplative cinema)

[terabin]

Harry Tuttle has responded to some of the blogathon's criticism with an excellent disclaimer:

That CC is a new artistic movement, and not the continuation/revival of an older one, is merely a GAMEPLAY (not a scholar study) to entertain this blogathon, which original goal is to just talk about the contemplative traits in cinema that can make certain people feel "boredom". Thus we just intend to defend challenging films against the accusation of being boring. So this covers a great range of films. That's why the discussions might sound a little confusing. Now if we can make sense of this trend all the better.

"Contemplative Cinema" is an improper nickname chosen out of convenience since we don't have an appropriate name yet. We could as well call it "Neo-Minimalism", "Neo-Silent", "Mundane drift", "Unspoken Cinema", "Non-narrativism", "Atmospherical films", "Body Language mise-en-scene", "visual dialog"... what have you. Let's just refer to it as CC, without bothering about the actual implication of the adjective "contemplative". This trend is not defined by an adjective, but from the outside-in, by certain like-minded films, by concentric circles narrowing it down finer and purer as we move on.

CC is not what is commonly refered to in the USA as "Boring Art films" which includes all and any serious films d'auteur, or in foreign language, without any aesthetical coherence. So "Boring art film" was the joke that started this blogathon, but shall not be refered to as a model.

The tentative 4 criteria set out in my Minimum Profile are my sole responsability, and are not meant to be definite either. They are a framework to help disambiguate the films that pop in the conversation. It a sketched out reference, but a work-in-progress. Also they do not pretend to be the aesthetical characteristics of our undefinied trend. They are used for profiling candidates to the trend from a formal outline, the quintessence that will eventually cement the selected films together will come later.Now if other people find interest in this investigation and want to explore other leads, you can define the trend any way suits you better.

Why CC is not a continuation of an older trend?

Well that's what I'd like to investigate. I contend that our most recent generation of contemplative auteurs deal with narration in a very different way than in the Modernism era. I see a clash, a rupture and that's why I don't consider them followers but innovators. They may not revolution every aspects of filmmaking, but a few things that their prcursors didn't do before them. These distinctions are mainly (and speculatively so far) the riddance of any narrative drive to build the purpose of a film. That's why it is almost impossible to sum up the "story" they contain. Consequantly/simultaneously the riddance of expository dialogs to walk the audience through the scenes, and dialogs altogether. I don't think Modernists could do that back then...

[davida2]

To me "Contemplative Cinema" immediately evokes Warhol, Snow (especially La Region Centrale), Maguerite Duras, Chantal Ackerman, Antonioni and Ozu.

All of those for me, along with some Rohmer, a lot of Satyajit Ray (apart from his enshrined masterpieces, I would single out the conversational and subtle Kanchenjungha and Days And Nights In The Forest, and the rambling, urban Middleman), specific Moshen Makhmalbaf films (especially The Silence), and King Hu's A Touch Of Zen (which adapts and loosely blends some classical Chinese literature, most notably several of Pu Songling's absurdist tales). All a highly varied lot, all very thoughtful in their own way, but not a "movement."

This is a varied lot of filmmakers, beyond their surfaces, and it's impossible to pull them together into a movement. I've tried and given up.

I'd point out several oft-overlooked aspects of several of the contemporary filmmakers mentioned: Kore'eda's narratives, which are loose, but they're there. I recall getting Kore'eda's Distance, and based on what I'd read about it, I was expecting something extremely diffuse, which turned out to not be the case at all.

I'd also mention Weerasethakul's folkloric and magic-realist impulses, which are precisely what I think makes him such an interesting filmmaker: there's more to him than quiet, minimalism, or unconventional structures.

[terabin]

Harry Tuttle and the folks over at the Unspoken Cinema blog are gearing up for a second blogathon on the subject of Contemplative Cinema, from Sunday, January 6th, through Sunday, January 13th.

Tuttle suggests as a tighter theme, "Narrative Strategies in Plotless Films," and has the following suggestions/questions as a guide for the blogathon:

To look at how C.C.C. films manage to tell a story without the traditional dramatic structure. To see if there is one alternative strategy or various types of contemplative plotlessness in these films to compensate the lack of dialogue and suspense-drive.

Contrarians could even prefer to note how we can find traces of classic narration (or an altered form) in C.C.C. films.

For example (if anyone feels inspired by it):

- Musical approach to C.C.C. analysis: silence, repetition/variation, tone color, frequency, rhythm/tempo, order/harmony (suggested by David Bordwell)
- Are there common/recurrant themes particularly suited to be best depicted by the C.C.C. form?
- Figure of the mute protagonist. Reasons and narrative justification why some people lost speech in C.C.C. films. Is it physical, medical, moral disorder, or the result of an insular environement?
- Beyond a plot-driven description of films (synopsis): to review films without summarizing actions and events, character acts, situations, narrative structures. (Recommended read by Adrian Martin : Obscure Objects of Desire: A Jam Session on Non-Narrative By Raymond Durgnat, David Ehrenstein and Jonathan Rosenbaum, from 1978)
- What happens during long takes that cannot be shown with a montage ellipsis?
- Evocation (by vacuum of the screen) of the unspoken, unrevealed reality taking place off-screen.
- The formal means of pragmatic existentialism. What substitutes the long-winded intellectual speeches, the verbal conceptualization of the similar alienation expressed in Modernist films?
- The end of the speaking parts. Often the hero in a C.C.C. film has less dialogue to speak than supporting characters. How lead actors counter this imbalance (body language, stillness, interiority) in opposition with traditional cinema.
- Passive, unintrusive camerawork restricts the narrative modes of expression of a C.C.C. auteur. What are the new minimal ways for a filmmaker to mark his/her own intentions in the story?
- Identification to non-actors, opposed to the star-driven glamourous idealism to look up to.
- Discontinuous tableaux-vivants, opposed to the classic continuous storytelling.
- Reviews/analysis of recent C.C.C. films released since last blogathon in January 2007, or ones not covered in the last blogathon as well.

Given the expected small turnout, it's better to leave the entries open to any topic and forms. The emphasis on "non-narration" this year is only an underlying point of conjonction. Anything goes, it's up to your imagination. As long as we continue to talk about this underanalyzed Contemplative trend.

Updated geneology chart

I think whether or not you agree that Contemplative Cinema is a unified movement in film (certainly a problematic idea), there were (first blogathon last year) and will be (this year's blogathon) many meaningful discussions to come out of the suggested idea. Be sure to check in at the Unspoken Cinema blog next week.

[John Cope]

Shaviro sounds off. Much of what he says is worthy of serious consideration and he is certainly right to point to the way in which a style can be commodified and become a lazy way to denote Significance and Importance. But it seems, to me at least as someone with a very broad range of aesthetic tastes, that this ultimately demands a very delicate argument as there are so many variables to each case. Still, calling presumptions into question and throwing the expectation for some kind of argument of merit back upon those who remain secure with just such unchallenged presumptions is commendable.

[John Cope]

More on the subject, this time in light of Apichatpong's Cannes win.

[Grand Illusion]

Shaviro sounds off. Much of what he says is worthy of serious consideration and he is certainly right to point to the way in which a style can be commodified and become a lazy way to denote Significance and Importance. But it seems, to me at least as someone with a very broad range of aesthetic tastes, that this ultimately demands a very delicate argument as there are so many variables to each case. Still, calling presumptions into question and throwing the expectation for some kind of argument of merit back upon those who remain secure with just such unchallenged presumptions is commendable.

I read the "passive-aggressive" column in the mag. It's extremely well-written and persuasive. I commented in the Hunger (McQueen) thread a while back that I feared the tropes of IMPORTANCE were already becoming a commodity. While I enjoy a lot of "slow cinema," I think it's important not to discard the artistic worth of films made in the form of traditional narrative and structure.

Ultimately, I find "contemplative cinema" much more subjective to what the viewer brings to the table (the variables you mention) because the films usually play with ambiguities and visual/aural "experiences" rather than constructions which convey a direct line from the author to the viewer.

One aspect I would love to see touched upon, by a writer much more worthy than myself, is the tendency of certain art films towards The Death of the Actor. Whether extremely-mannered performances, shooting in static wide-angles so far away as to obscure the actor's face, or a liberal usage of looping (if there is dialogue at all), many art films are losing the valuable humanity that actors bring to the table in favor of a Total Auteur method of treating the talent as puppets or "models" (a term Bresson favored.)

[BenoitRouilly]

Dear friend of Contemplative Cinema,
I don't know if it's the right place to post this (maybe in Other Lists instead?) but why not revive this old thread...

Would you like to contribute to the 2023 survey on Contemplative Cinema ?
I am asking cinephiles their 10 greatest contemplative films of all time (unranked, no rules). Additional comments on your list welcome.
Please include the short byline you would like to be referred to (Name, speciality, link, Social Media). Deadline : 10th of February 2023.
Feel free to extend this invitation to anyone you think would like to post a ballot.
All the Top10’s will be posted on the blog Unspoken Cinema and ultimately tabulated into a 2023 collective canon for posterity.
Many thanks for considering to participate.

Benoit Rouilly (aka HarryTuttle)

[Penti Mento]

Would you like to contribute to the 2023 survey on Contemplative Cinema ?

I'd prefer not to think about it